Cooke has been named chairman of Olbom, On Language’s Board of Octogenarian Mentors, though he insists on calling it OGPU, Octogenarians Guarding Proper Usage, because his acronym recalls an old Soviet spy organization.

At Fort Bragg, McIlwain recalls a sense of being held hostage, a feeling he would later recall at Tuskegee when his white flight instructors banned he and his fellow black pilots from reading black literature and newspapers.

Mountain recalls Kok also leading the Boyd Neel Orchestra in the absence of the usual leader, Maurice Clare: "We always enjoyed his leading – he led firmly and his playing had strength and truthfulness."